


all the good that gives misery meaning

by tieria



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-09-23 04:53:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17073833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tieria/pseuds/tieria
Summary: If one day they stumbled upon a time machine, then enemies again they'd be.





	all the good that gives misery meaning

**Author's Note:**

> I want to return to this idea again one day but with the full cast!! It doesn't really mesh with current (s2) yusaku's characterization but please forgive me, I've had this idea since like november of last year (lol)

Spectre and Yusaku have… a thing. It’s probably not love- convenience, perhaps, an understanding that their worldviews will never be the same but have been shaped by the same steps in opposite directions. 

It is soda-pop kindness and hours spent idly sniping at each other across a table outside Cafe Nagi, lunch dates turned into afternoons despite the dozens of other, better things they had to do. It is a tentative alliance long since turned into a reliable bond, a message log that Ai likes to made pointed comments over whenever he comes to visit and the  _ look _ Yusaku gets whenever he does. 

It is very many things, though it probably isn’t love. Most importantly- it’s a shattering, broken edges and someone left behind far from the goal.

Well. They’d always known that one day it would come to this.

 

“Stop.” It is not a shout, but he lifts his voice as he gives the order. He’s almost a bit surprised when Yusaku  _ does- _ when he draws back his hand from the goal and turns from the edge of the precipice to face Spectre, out of breath and flushed from having chased him this far. But only  _ almost.  _ He’s learned, this past year. Fujiki Yusaku is kind. It will be the downfall of them all.

“I’m not doing this for me,” Yusaku says before Spectre can so much as accuse him. Well, thinks Spectre- it’s understandable. When they’d first met, Yusaku could never have imagined the sort of revelations Spectre would give him. Now, half the time Spectre thinks that Yusaku knows what he’s about to say before he even realizes it himself. 

They’d gotten a little too close, perhaps. What foolish sentimentality.  

Spectre eyes him with something he so very much wants to be disdain. “Then pray tell. What could your motivation  _ possibly  _ be?” 

Yusaku faces him with straight and honest eyes and says, “If Takeru was never taken, then his parents would never have had to go out searching for him. If Jin had never been taken, then Kusanagi would never have had to suffer. If Windy was never created, then-“

“Enough,” Spectre spits, thinking that of all the habits Yusaku had broken since they’d first met, Spectre should have tried to break him of  _ this. _ “Enough. You’re trying to be a savior, Fujiki. We’ve discussed this. It’s not your place to take up the burdens on others’ shoulders.”

“I don’t want my friends to suffer,” Yusaku replies, simple as the truth. 

_ Then why are you trying to ruin my life?  _ Spectre doesn’t return, because  _ friends _ has never been the right word for them. Yusaku knows. He’s always known. Without the Lost Incident, Spectre is nothing. He’d learned the meaning of life at six years old though suffering that had finally brought a smile to his lips, found a family through pain and regret and all the jagged edges that had become a brilliant mosaic in time.

And Yusaku had lost it all. 

But, Spectre knows, true as everything else that’s shaped them- Yusaku has also found everything again. Of his own power. Of his own will. For him to throw it all away now...

“You haven’t convinced me,” Spectre replies, and lifts his arm, shifting into stance. Yusaku mirrors him across the field, because this is the simplest way to settle things. It is easier to blame skill than personality, than conflicting desires. It’s more impersonal, this way. 

“You’ll have to beat me, first,” Yusaku returns, and the challenge is far, far too friendly for the anger Spectre wants to feel. 

“Much obliged.”

Spectre takes the first turn before Yusaku can think of it, and proceeds with overwhelming advantage. Field, hand, sheer determination- Spectre has it all in spades. Yusaku faces him down calmly, undaunted by the familiar sight of his mother tree, and draws his first card.

 

(He doesn’t win. In the end, he’s never managed to beat Yusaku when it counts.)

 

Yusaku crosses the floor to him, leaving behind all the power of the gods-  _ to change the past and create a new future, truly Atlas with the weight of the world on his back- _ and for a moment, just a foolish moment, Spectre dares to hope-

But only a moment. Yusaku crouches down beside him and holds out his hand. “I want one thing from you.”

No matter how he wishes for the contrary, Spectre has no right to refuse. He hands over what Yusaku wants- another piece of foolish, foolish sentimentality that he hates to part with but might just hate Yusaku for taking even more- and watches as he moves back towards the portal. But he doesn’t step through.

Instead, Yusaku turns back to him. There’s a softness to his eyes, sentimentality at its finest. He lifts a hand, as if to wave goodbye, opens his mouth, as if to say words that won’t soothe an aching wound. Spectre stares back at him sharp and bites out- “Get it over with.”

Yusaku blinks, nods gently back at him. And then Yusaku is gone, vanished into the network and the past, disappeared from any reality Spectre knows. 

It is the end. Spectre closes his eyes. 

* * *

Yusaku assembles a list- Grab a ring before it falls down onto a grate and into the unreachable sewers. Walk Jin home, that fateful day. Call the police before an eight year old child ever has to be responsible for his father’s death at the price of six children’s lives. Make sure that three people never make it to work, that day, so that child still has someone to go home to in this life, too.

He is everywhere and nowhere; pieces of data and flesh bound to no time save the impulses of his own mind. His existence is something between the physical and virtual, guided through the fabric of the universe by his instincts and Ai’s knowledge. One by one items vanish from the list. Acct by act, the new future is born. 

And the final one- the final one takes him here. He watches from the shade of the thin trees as the rescue team advances on the scene, as they carry out children, frightened and crying but otherwise mostly unhurt. They’d likely all be fine- the experiment hadn’t yet began, not with a child or two still missing from the scene. 

Yusaku breathes out a long sigh of relief- and a pain shoots up his chest, rattling through him and forcing him down to his knees with ragged breaths. He catches himself amongst the fallen leaves and squints his eyes against the old, familiar pain. His hands supporting him are starting to waver, grow transparent in his vision. 

Ah- so it’s this kind of world that they live in, then. 

But before he fades, there’s one last thing he has to do. An epilogue. A heavy weight in his pocket, the burden of responsibility he won’t forgive himself for failing. 

“Ai,” he asks, and Ai doesn’t reply so much as he drags Yusaku away, towards a place he’d found after a bit of research and a little bit of knowledge rattling around the holes in his head. In the second it takes them to jump Ai fixes up something of his soul- or perhaps just his programs, now- and it feels like a pat on the back. A congratulations for a job well done, a final push of encouragement. 

They land hard on the pavement, stumbling out with scraped palms and dirt on his knee. But it only takes them a moment to find who they need to.

The boy doesn’t really understand his instructions. When Yusaku kneels down and tells him very carefully what he’s entrusting him with, though, the boy nods seriously and takes it with careful hands. It’s a quest- one much kinder than even forgiveness. 

There’s no guarantee that it won’t fade with him- that ever action Yusaku’s taken in this altered past won’t be all for naught. That somehow Kogami won’t find them again, or take different children, that they won’t just suffer again and repeat it all once more. Maybe they already have. Maybe Yusaku is just running this cycle over and over again, damning them all to an eternity of sorrow without meaning. 

But he’d like to think that he isn’t. This time, he’d like to think that they’ll be happy from the start. The world before his eyes is blurry- or perhaps that’s just his vision, calling him away from the new past he’s just created. 

_ Good job, partner, _ Ai whispers in the depths of his consciousness, and Yusaku nods. And then they are gone, vanished towards a new world. 

* * *

A boy approaches him. He’s unfamiliar, and clearly not from the orphanage- he wouldn’t be approaching Spectre at all if he was. Meaning he’s not one of  _ their _ friends, either. Still, Spectre watches him with wary eyes. He’s not so quick to trust anyone, these days.

For a moment- just for a moment, when that boy had taken his hand and led him somewhere with a promise of  _ purpose, _ Spectre had dared to take him seriously. He’d dared to think that perhaps his life might finally change. 

And all he’d done was end up back here. Powerless. Unchanged. 

_ Pathetic. _

“My name’s Yusaku!” chirps the boy, and flops down to sit beside Spectre. Spectre shifts away on instinct, but the boy just scoots closer again as he asks, undeterred by such subtle refusals, “Do you like Duel Monsters?”

Spectre isn’t sure how to answer that. It’s not as if he has anyone to play with, after all. But Yusaku isn’t concerned with his answer. He fiddles for a moment with the deck holder he pulls from his jacket pocket, then presents something to Spectre with a grin. With reluctance, still convinced that Yusaku will just pull the card back the moment he reaches for it, Spectre lifts his hand and takes it. 

On the card is a tree. No- not just  _ a _ tree, but somehow, impossibly-

“Where did you get this?”

The boy tilts his head, thinks for a moment with troubled eyes. Spectre watches him intently, leans forwards for any hint of a strange reaction, but the boy doesn’t seem bothered. Not by him, anyway. He says, finally. “I… don’t remember. They said it’s yours? And I had to give it to you, or else you wouldn’t come with us.”

Spectre squints at him skeptical. “Us?”

But Yusaku only lights up, delighted by the change of topic. “I have a friend who plays with me. He’s got a really cool deck. They use all these dragons and this stuff I’ve never heard of before. But I’m learning! He gave me some, too. Play with us sometime?”

He has no reason to accept. But Yusaku’s eyes sparkle when he speaks, and his hand held out in invitation is earnest. He still doesn’t know if he can trust this boy or his mysterious friend. He still doesn’t know if there’s a purpose to his life other than to be shunned. Even if he accepts now, there’s a high probability that he’ll only be discarded later, same as the image of his fallen mother tree on the card he’d just been given. 

But. 

No one’s ever asked him to come and play, before. He reaches up. Yusaku takes his hand.

(The new world begins.)

**Author's Note:**

> With the chance to go back and amend every grievance  
> How could I resist preventing my demons  
> From ever existing and making a mess  
> Of the life that I could have had
> 
> Would I return to you  
> To the love I knew  
> Or would I have undone  
> All the good that gives misery meaning  
> -["The Right Wrong"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZgN3XwsURU) by The Dear Hunter


End file.
